


Time is the light passing

by brynnmck



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/M, MacGuffins, Table Sex, Table Sex Tuesday, also there's formalwear, just so you can set your expectations appropriately, there is much less cool spy shit in here than there is two hot badasses falling in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:55:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24153913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brynnmck/pseuds/brynnmck
Summary: Jaime is nursing a glass of champagne and watching his target carefully when a flash of blonde hair on a tall form catches the corner of his eye and heat rushes through him before he can control it.It's not her, he tells himself firmly. It's never her these days, not for almost two years. He's not letting himself get his hopes up again. For all he knows, she's dead.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 74
Kudos: 335





	Time is the light passing

**Author's Note:**

> So there was some discussion recently about how this fandom needed a lot more table sex, and then there were also some fun Alias gifs on my dash, and now here we are! Given the inspiration, I want to make everyone fully aware that if what you're looking for is a tightly-plotted, thoroughly-researched spy adventure, this is... not that thing. Written for Table Sex Tuesday, which I encourage everyone to participate in as a lifestyle and a philosophy rather than a temporally-bound event. 
> 
> Thank you very much to the excellent SD Wolfpup for helping me get this into shape for posting. Any remaining lack of shapeliness here is entirely due to me.

**RIVERRUN: now**

Jaime is nursing a glass of champagne and watching his target carefully when a flash of blonde hair on a tall form catches the corner of his eye and heat rushes through him before he can control it. _It's not her_ , he tells himself firmly. It's never her these days, not for almost two years. He's not letting himself get his hopes up again. For all he knows, she's dead.

No matter how many times he makes himself think it, the brutality of that idea, the sheer fucking _waste_ of it, takes his breath away.

The first time he'd met her, they'd literally been at sea; in retrospect, he thinks that should have been a sign. 

The music is gently suggestive, the shards of the chandelier glittering, the drunken laughter a little too loud in the swirl of expensive fabrics. Jaime had grown up with parties like this, with daggers behind every glint of gold and jewels. He'd hated them even then, and now he can only be glad that his job here is to move under this world rather than try to hack his way to the top of it. Of course, he has had to fend off a few admirers--two separate women, and a woman and a man together--but he's practiced at the polite lie, the charmingly self-deprecating shrug. _Thanks, but I'm married. I'd love to, but my boyfriend would let me hear about it._ It's an occupational hazard. They typically bore easily, and for the ones who don't, he's always got a monologue prepared on some banal topic that will make their eyes glaze over while he's keeping watch for whoever or whatever he's actually there for.

None of them stay for long.

His target, Jimmy Fernough, is in a far corner, flanked by bodyguards and surrounded by a half-circle of sycophants. Jaime's watching him and very much _not_ watching for anyone else when there's suddenly a presence at his elbow. A warmth.

"Would you like to dance?" she asks, and it's a bullet straight through the center of his chest, leaving wreckage in its wake. He turns slightly. There she is, her eyes as stunning as ever as they flicker back and forth between him and Fernough. Silk runs down her body like she's wrapped herself in the deepest part of the ocean. 

She's alive.

She's alive, and she's here, and he forces the word "Yes" out of a dry throat.

_**THE SUMMER SEA: then** _

He was inside the cabin of the drugged ambassador, reaching for the key he'd been sent to retrieve, when a figure clad in head-to-toe black wriggled out from behind an end-table.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the figure hissed. She--at least he thought it was a she; he'd rarely seen men with eyes like that--sounded _offended_ , and he almost laughed.

"The same thing you are, I'd imagine," he murmured back.

She narrowed her eyes at him. It was subtle, he'd give her credit for that, but he could still see the tension coiling throughout her body. When she sprang at him, he was ready.

Or at least he'd thought he was ready, but gods, there was a lot of her. Long legs and long arms wrapped around him like sea serpents as they both rolled across the floor, searching for weak spots. Fortunately for him, he didn't have many of those, and her attacks were much more brute strength than finesse. After a few moments of scuffling--by the Warrior, she was _strong_ \--he managed to get her wrists zip-tied to one of the legs of the bed. He quickly pocketed the key from the bedside drawer and stood well out of even her formidable kicking range as he contemplated her. He could see a tiny bit of blonde hair peeking out around the edges of her head covering.

"Not bad," he told her, more breathless than he wanted her to know. She glared up at him, chest heaving. Not wasting energy on struggling, though, which moved her up another notch in his estimation. The ambassador was still asleep, thank the gods. He hoped they hadn't both drugged him; if he was dead, that could be awkward.

"I need that key," she insisted. "Lives depend on it." He couldn't see her face, but those eyes were bright with a fervor he recognized all too well.

He did laugh a little at that. "Oh, am I in the presence of a _hero_?" He shook his head and clucked his tongue. "Free lesson, Blue Eyes: there aren't any of those in this business. Whoever you're working for, they have their own agenda. Best find out what it is… assuming you make it out of here, of course." 

He slipped out the window before he could hear any reply she might have made. 

The next day, as he made his drop for yet another in a long line of faceless strangers, he couldn't help but wonder what she would have done with that little key, if she were on the other end of it.

_**YRONWOOD: then** _

From his vantage in the air duct, Jaime checked his watch. Ninety seconds until the guards' shift change. From there, he'd have a fifteen-minute window to get into the office, crack the password, and take photos of the weapons schematics. It would be tight, but he'd manage. He always did.

One of the guards stretched. "I can't wait to get out of here."

"Did you hear about the woman they found trying to break in earlier?" the other one asked.

Jaime's senses snapped to high alert. If they thought they'd caught someone already, so much the better for him. 

"Yeah, some giant blonde bitch, right? They've got her in one of the holding rooms; I heard the boss has a few questions for her." His grin was wide and malevolent. 

"Ooh. Maybe I'll stop by later and listen in," said the other one, laughing. "Come on, I bet we have time for a beer before he really gets going."

They meandered off down the hallway. Jaime checked his watch again and grimaced. They could have anyone in there. The chances that it was the same tall blonde woman he'd rolled around a well-appointed cabin with two years ago were astronomical.

According to the map of the complex that he had in his head, the holding rooms weren't far. He started crawling that direction, cursing himself the entire way.

Two minutes and seventeen seconds later, he was dropping down into the hallway and catching the surprised guard in a chokehold. Fifty-seven seconds after that, the door was open and he was dragging the unconscious guard into the holding room. Four seconds after that, he was looking at a pair of blue eyes that had been haunting his memory for much too long.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she demanded. Her eyes weren't the only thing about her that hadn't changed, apparently.

"Always so flattering to be remembered. Do you have the password?" He moved behind her to unlock the cuffs binding her to the chair.

"What?"

"Don't waste time," he snapped. "I know you're here for the same thing I am. I don't have the password to access the schematics. Do you?"

She chafed her wrists, watching him warily. "Yes," she said after only a brief hesitation. One side of her face was swollen, her lip crusted with dried blood in the corner.

"Come on," he said, and she followed him back out into the hallway.

She was tall enough that all she needed to get up into the duct was for him to drop to one knee and let her stand on his other thigh. He was half-expecting her to leave him there, but as soon as she was settled, she dropped partway back out and extended a hand to him.

She pulled him up easily. So easily that Jaime tried not to dwell too much on it as he crawled along behind her, tapping her feet to indicate a direction every time they came to a crossroad.

There were just over five minutes to go on Jaime's internal clock when they huddled in front of the computer and she typed in the password with gloved hands. _ACCESS GRANTED_ blinked on the screen, and then the schematics appeared.

Jaime looked at her, fighting a smile. She shot him a conspiratorial grin and pulled a flash drive out of her pocket.

"No." He grabbed her hand.

"What?"

"There's some kind of a virus. If you try to transfer the files, they'll get corrupted. Here." He pulled out his burner phone and snapped pictures quickly as she clicked through the files.

"Got them?" she asked, when the last image was displayed.

"Yes." He tucked the phone back in his pocket and zipped it to secure it.

"Good, because someone's coming."

 _Someone_ turned out to be six henchmen of various sizes and skill sets. Jaime dispatched his first one and spared a glance to see how Blue Eyes was faring. She was faster than she'd been two years ago, cleverer, and he could feel the blood starting to sing in his veins as he put his back to hers.

It wasn't a long fight.

They took out several more on their way out of the complex, and then they were away, standing on the far side of a hill in the darkness. Jaime's own planned escape route led west; he wondered about hers.

"Who are you working for?" she asked. 

He knew he should lie to her. He didn't. "I'm more of an independent consultant these days."

Her grin flared, and he had a moment of reflexive awareness, like someone had turned on a flashlight. He'd seen freckles all over her face, back there under the fluorescent lights. "So am I."

The corners of his mouth twitched. "So you took my advice." He didn't know why that mattered to him. He didn't know why any of this mattered to him.

"Looks like we both did," she answered lightly. "Don't let those fall into the wrong hands, all right?"

"I won't," he said, and he meant it. It was the one promise he'd made to himself, the reason he'd struck out on his own in the first place.

Another pause, while they stared at each other. "You could have left me there," she told him finally. "I won't forget that you didn't." She leaned in and pressed her lips to his cheek. She smelled like sweat and the crushed grass underneath their feet. And then she was running off into the darkness, heading east, her short hair blowing out behind her.

It wasn't until he was almost a mile away that he discovered that she'd switched her own phone for his.

He laughed until his stomach hurt, because what else could he do?

The next morning, on the phone she'd left him, there was a text from an unknown number: _I did mean what I said: I owe you one. And if you meant what you said, then we have the same mission. And those assholes are going down. That's a promise._

He considered replying, but he knew better.

_**PENTOS: then** _

He barely felt the wound until they were huddling in an alley while their pursuers sped by. As soon as the adrenaline started to drain, his legs buckled under him and he found himself sliding down the wall, the brick tearing at his jacket like little teeth.

She scrambled to catch him and pulled him sideways until he was cradled against her. Gods, she was warm. He was beginning to shiver. 

When she found the bullet hole just inside his shoulder, she sucked in a breath. That told him as much as the blood soaking his shirt. She tore off her own shirt--she had a tank top underneath, he noticed with a wry sort of disappointment; the gods could have done him a favor on that one, under the circumstances--and pressed it against the wound.

"We've got to stop meeting like this, Blue Eyes." Five times, now, in just over a year, and he was almost starting to expect it. Almost planning his missions with the assumption that he'd have a partner. 

Almost.

"Just hold tight, I'll get you help," she promised.

He wanted to take in the sight of her shoulders, her exposed collarbone, but his vision was wavering, his body starting to go numb everywhere except where she was touching him. "Kiss me," he asked her suddenly. He didn't know how many breaths he had left, and he didn't want to waste any more _not_ asking that.

"You're not going to die," she told him. Commanded him, really. She was holding his blood inside him as best she could with her long fingers. "Don't even fucking think about it."

"I know." His world had narrowed to the blurry blue of her eyes. "But just in case."

After a few eternal seconds while he struggled to hold on to consciousness, she bent her head and pressed her lips to his. Hard and somehow possessive, like she was determined to wrestle the Stranger for him. He very much wanted to watch her try, but a black wave swamped him and the next thing he knew, he was waking up alone in the hospital with stitches in his shoulder and the airtight cover story she'd left behind for him.

_**LYS: then** _

Lys was, Jaime truly believed at the time, the gods smiling on him for once.

He'd just finished helping vital medicine find its way into the hands of people who needed it instead of corporations who'd hold it hostage for the largest possible influx of cash, and he was feeling accomplished enough that he'd decided he deserved a vacation. Lys presented the ideal combination of hedonism and anonymity--everyone there would be so busy trying to indulge their own fantasies that they'd leave him to his own much less ambitious ones--and so he'd booked a room at a high-end resort and hopped on the next flight.

At first, it was exactly what he'd hoped for: he woke up on pristine white sheets instead of surrounded by the musty smell of a safehouse, he ate a sumptuous lunch with his back to the wall and only half an eye out for anyone who might be trying to kill him. He was idly perusing the cocktail menu and debating on whether he'd rather have his drink in the restaurant or on his balcony when he glanced toward the bar and saw her.

He hadn't noticed her come in, and shit, maybe he needed to be keeping more than half an eye out. Or maybe she was just that good. Either way, even from the back, he would have known her anywhere: the bright waves of hair just brushing the back of her neck, curling in the humidity; the cords of sinuous muscle bared by the straps of her cheerful golden sundress. He'd never seen anywhere near so much of her, though, and his tongue curled in his mouth with the intensity of his desire to find out what all those miles of milky skin tasted like. 

He left a handful of bills on the table and crossed the room to slide onto the barstool next to hers. "Buy you a drink, Blue Eyes?"

Surprise flickered over her face, and--he was gratified to note--pleasure, before she slipped her mask of calm back into place. "Am I missing something?" The eyes in question started scanning the room, her spine straightening slightly.

"No, no," he assured her. "I'm off the clock. You?"

She tilted her head at him and took a sip of her drink. There was no umbrella in it, but it was peach-colored, fruity and frivolous, and it delighted him. Up close, he could see the faint sun-flush on her skin, see the veritable star chart of freckles scattered across it. His mouth watered again. "Vacation," she answered, and he remembered he'd asked a question.

"Ah." His mind had clicked into gear without him realizing it, calculating risk and reward, identifying potential points of entry. He hadn't quite decided on a strategy yet when she suddenly said, 

"Would it be…" She stopped herself, then squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye. "Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?" 

He'd seen her defuse bombs and take down men twice her bulk without batting an eyelash. To see her thrown off balance, even briefly, by _him_... Jaime couldn't remember when he'd been more flattered.

"Name the time and place," he told her.

When she showed up to dinner with a flower tucked behind her ear, wearing sultry red lipstick and an emerald green dress that dipped in a perilously deep vee between her breasts, he started to wonder if maybe he was in over his head.

When he heard her laugh for the first time--really laugh, unguarded and loud enough to blow every cover--he could feel the water rising even higher.

When he fucked her against the outer wall of the hotel, shrouded in deep shadows and surrounded by the scent of tropical flora, he was clinging to the last departing lifeboat with the tips of his fingers.

When he looked up at her afterward, stroked the sweaty tendrils of hair away from her forehead, kissed her swollen lips, and murmured, "Pretty good vacation so far, Blue Eyes," and she leaned in and whispered on a ghost of sound, "Brienne. It's Brienne," well. 

He was well and truly lost.

She took him back to her room, let him find every nuance in the flavors of her under his tongue: the curve of her shoulder, the line of her triceps, the length of her hamstrings, the haven of her cunt. She asked him about his most embarrassing failure on a mission, and laughed with him over her own. She rode him in the chair on her balcony with the stars behind her head like a crown. She told him about the loss of her siblings, the way she tried to keep their memories alive by doing what she thought would make them proud. She sucked his cock into the heat of her mouth until thought he'd die of it and go happily.

Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, when the birds were chirping and the first faint light was starting to glow at the edges of the sky, she tangled her fingers in his and gave a jaw-cracking yawn. "Stay?" she asked. Eyelids heavy, voice hoarse.

He rolled over on his side, dragged her arm around him, and fell into the deepest sleep he'd had in years.

Much later, he woke up to find that the sun was streaming in through a crack in the curtains and the shower was running. Feeling buoyant and invincible and a little bit sore, he passed a few minutes cracking the hotel safe, just for fun, then moved on to a quick sweep of the room. Tucked in a pouch underneath the mattress, he found a few passports and small bills; he had a similar bag in his own room. All the passports had her face, but none of them said "Brienne," just like none of his said "Jaime." Something expanded inside his chest. He'd felt the truth of it last night, but having more evidence here in front of him, in the daylight, was reassurance he hadn't realized he needed. 

Smiling and intent, he slipped into the shower with her and did his best to sear his own name into her mind by making her call it out repeatedly as he knelt at her feet and buried his mouth between her legs until the water ran cold. 

They made grand plans to go hiking, then promptly abandoned those plans in favor of spending the day in bed and ordering room service when they needed to muster strength for another round. Jaime couldn't remember the last time he'd exchanged so many words in a row with another human being, not to mention so many orgasms.

He woke in the morning to find a note on the pillow next to him that simply said, _I'm so sorry_. 

At first, he couldn't accept it at face value. He spent three months tracking down the slightest hint of a lead, the faintest whisper of someone who might have been her. He came up empty every time. He had nightmares of her being tortured, of her bleeding out in some dark alley somewhere, of her laughing at the idea that a fuck in Lys was anything more than a fuck in Lys. He dreamed about her smiling at him, sparring with him, head thrown back while he plunged inside her--and those dreams were almost worse.

In the end, it didn't matter what he did or what he dreamed; she was gone. 

After a while, he forced himself to stop looking. 

**RIVERRUN: now**

She steps into his arms like no time has passed at all. He wants to ask her where the hell she's been, what the hell happened, if she's all right. She looks more than all right, and she feels even better, all power and grace under his hands as he glides her around the dance floor. The back of her dress is dangerously low, meaning there's naked skin against his fingertips; it's a fight not to tear away the fabric to get to more. Every other step she takes bares a long flash of pale thigh and the straps of her high heels. Distantly, Jaime remembers that they have a mission here; fortunately, with two of them, it's easy enough to keep Fernough in their sights at all times. 

Brienne--and gods, what it does to him to think her name while she's right there in his arms, after those two syllables have been locked somewhere deep in his chest for two years--leans close to murmur in Jaime's ear. "There's a safe upstairs."

"I know," he answers, more shortly than he means to. After all this time, she should expect that he would have _basic fucking information_ , for fuck's sake.

She curls her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. "I'm sorry," she says, and the weight of it seems to settle between his shoulder-blades. He wishes he knew exactly what she was apologizing for. "I've been… it's been too long."

He tilts his head back so he can see her face. _Whose fucking fault is that_ , he wants to ask, and then, again, _what the hell happened_ , when he sees the pained crease in the middle of her forehead, the shadows at the edges of her eyes. Like him, she's an accomplished liar. But everyone has their tells, and no matter how closely he looks, he doesn't see any of hers. On instinct, he pulls her closer, resting his temple against hers. He can feel the sigh that seems to roll through her body like a wave. Her hand fists tight in the fabric at his back.

"I missed you," she tells him quietly. He's still trying to catch his breath when he sees that Fernough is on the move. 

It's surprisingly easy to fall into their old rhythm. They take the back stairway: his bowtie loosened, his arm hooked around her shoulders, both of them laughing too loudly on their way out of the ballroom. When one of the servers hurries by them, Brienne giggles and pushes Jaime against the wall with her face buried in his neck. He'd be worried about being remembered later, but there's no way she can be forgettable anyway; playing another pair in a long line of wealthy assholes is as good a strategy as any.

The server's footsteps fade away. Brienne's lips are hovering a whisper from Jaime's skin and her breath is warm and humid in the hollow above his collarbone. Every time she inhales, he feels it against his chest. He once spent three days camped on a mountainside peering through a rifle scope until he was sure he'd go blind, and still, he can't think of anything he's ever done that's been more difficult than staying motionless in this moment.

She nuzzles his neck briefly, so briefly he can't even be sure it's not just his own wishful thinking, and then pushes herself away. He straightens his coat and follows her up the stairs.

Jaime's got eyes in Fernough's office already, a camera he'd planted the night before. He pulls up the video feed, and they wait in the shadows for Fernough to make the exchange with his pet scientist, wait for him to lock up the prototype for the bioweapon that could bring a city the size of King's Landing to its knees within a week. Of course, Fernough isn't interested in that--it's too much like work for his liking, Jaime assumes--but he's certainly eager to sell to the highest bidder.

Fernough makes his way back to the party, and they make their move. Brienne stands guard at the door while Jaime taps his stolen code into the keypad on the safe. When the door slides open, he hisses a curse.

"What?" Brienne turns from the doorway. "What's wrong?"

"Secondary lock," he answers shortly. "Two keys."

 _"Fuck,"_ Brienne growls. "That wasn't in my intel."

"Mine either." Jaime's already running his fingers along the bottom of the central drawer on the desk--Fernough doesn't strike him as the creative type. Brienne clearly has the same idea; she's checking underneath paperweights and behind books. 

"Got one," Jaime says triumphantly after a couple of minutes, having found the false bottom on one of the ugliest-looking dog statues he's ever seen. 

Brienne doesn't answer. When he looks over at her, she's got that stubborn set to her face that she often does when he manages to get the better of her, and he almost laughs. He keeps searching, and a moment later, she straightens up from digging around in a potted plant and holds out a dirt-streaked key.

 _"Ha,"_ she says, "finally," and they're both grinning as they move toward the safe.

He counts them down. They turn the keys in unison. The inner door pops open.

"Here," Brienne says. She pulls a small container out of her purse and holds it out to him. "It's watertight, airtight, bullet- and bomb-proof. Total containment."

He's got his own gadget for the same purpose, but there's a flare of tentative hope in her eyes that he can't resist. He takes the container from her and places the little vial carefully inside, then tucks the whole thing into his inner jacket pocket.

If it turns out she's put a tracking device in there, he won't be responsible for his actions.

They've managed to eradicate any evidence of their presence and have almost lost themselves in the darkness at the far end of the hallway when they hear voices coming up the main stairs. Brienne pulls him into the nearest room--a library, and more for show than anything else, judging by the dust on the books--and crowds him behind the angle of the open door. They wait, holding their breath; the voices come nearer, then veer off toward another room. They can hear a door slam, followed by a woman's laughing shriek.

Then it's silence, leaving Jaime with nothing to distract him from his almost painful awareness of the way Brienne is pressed up against him. She's solid and alive and he's dreamed of her a hundred times, and when he turns his head, her eyes are the bright blue of an acetylene torch. Before he can say or do anything, she grabs the ends of his bowtie and yanks him in for a bruising kiss.

It's not so much that he forgets about the mission as that he absolutely ceases to care about it while her tongue strokes deeply inside his mouth and her fingers tangle in his hair. Holding her feels like holding a lightning storm, like she's the clouds and the earth and the shock in between--Jaime can feel the reverberations of it everywhere they touch. She tastes just as addictive as he remembers, just as raw and real, and he slides his hand into the high slit of her dress, half out of his mind with _more, closer, now_.

All that meets his seeking palm is skin, and then springy curls, and then glorious slick heat. He's got his fingers in her up to the second knuckle and she's got her teeth in the fabric at his shoulder before the thought fully registers with him that she's been naked underneath that silk all night, that she'd slid on that inky dress and nothing else and come here looking not just for the prototype, but for him. Looking for _this_. The door is still open; through the crack below the hinge, he can just make out the plush carpet of the hallway.

She releases his jacket from between her teeth and falls back against the wall, dragging the skirt of her dress out of the way so that they can both see exactly what he's doing to her. She's wet enough that he can hear the soft but unmistakable sounds of his fingers moving in and out of her cunt. She tilts her hips, all of her muscles tense and trembling. He plunges in deeper. When he pulls his hand back, the sheen of her juices catches the light, and a shiver runs like a current from her body into his. Then he crooks his fingers inside her, and she flails up with one hand--graceless for once--and pulls him in for another kiss, burying her cry in his mouth as she comes in a flood against him.

She keeps kissing him while she quakes through the aftershocks, drifting from open-mouthed desperation into an aching sort of sweetness, her lips soft and deliberate. When she pulls away, it's only far enough to rest her forehead against his. He cups her cunt in his palm and leaves his fingers inside her; she doesn't seem to be objecting, and he can't bear breaking the connection just yet. He'll be ruthless with himself in a minute.

"I have a contact coming for the hand-off," she tells him. The hint of a smile plays at the corners of her mouth--probably at her own choice of phrasing, given where his hand is right now.

"When?" he asks. His own plan involves a dead drop tomorrow, and as much as he enjoys getting the jump on her, getting the prototype out of Fernough's hands as quickly as possible is worth the minor blow to his ego.

Probably.

"Midnight," she says.

They both check the clock on the wall.

They've got thirty-three minutes.

Brienne tugs gently on his wrist until he slides his fingers out of her. He untucks his shirt and wipes his hand on the tail of it, enjoying the thought of carrying her scent with him. She smoothes her dress over her legs and carefully closes the door. 

The click of the lock sliding home goes through Jaime like the crack of a starting pistol, and almost before the sound has had time to fade, he's kissing her with all the yearning and ferocity that's been bursting in him all this time. 

He's been hard ever since she'd pushed him in here--a little hard, maybe, ever since he'd seen her in the ballroom--and now he plasters her hips against his, desperate for friction. She gives him that and more, sliding one hand between them to palm him, dragging him backward toward the mahogany reading table that's in the middle of the room. He starts to hoist her up on it, but she shakes her head and turns in his arms. She braces her hands on the glossy surface and grinds her ass against his erection and he sees starbursts behind his eyelids.

He slips the straps of her dress over her shoulders, chases the fabric down to her waist with his hands. Her breasts fit into his palms like they were made for each other, her nipples are tight and pebbled between his fingers, her quiet moan sets off a cascade of memories like a sudden downpour. He'd felt so close to her in Lys, he'd been so _sure_ \--and then she leans forward a little, head tipped down, baring the vulnerable back of her neck to him, and he realizes: she's doing this on purpose. Offering her trust in return for having taken his. 

He's not fool enough to say no.

His chest tight with emotion he can't quite put a name to, he puts a hand between her shoulder-blades and gives her the faint suggestion of a push, a barely-perceptible pressure. She follows his lead immediately, sliding her hands forward until her torso is stretched out in front of him on the table. She hisses a little when her bare skin meets the cool wood.

He yanks the bowtie from around his neck, steps away from her body long enough to wrap the tie around her wrist instead and tether it to the table leg. Her other hand is free, and even if it weren't, he knows that even his best knot can't hold her any more than hers could hold him. _Stay_ , is what he's telling her--pleading with her, really. She nods and winds her fingers around the fabric, drawing it into her fist, and his breath gusts out of him.

Moving behind her again, he puts his palms flat against the table on either side of her ribs, and leans down to run his lips and tongue along every surface of her that he can reach. He knows they're on a deadline, but he's trained his memory as rigorously as his muscles and he uses every trick he knows to burn her into his brain: the sight of all those acres of pale skin, the rasp of her quickened breathing, the taste of the sweat at her neck, the feel of her muscles rippling under his mouth, the smell of her arousal that grows stronger and stronger as he moves down her spine. By the time he's dipping his tongue into the small hollow just above her ass, she's writhing on the table, her hand clenching and unclenching in his tie.

"Jaime," she gasps, and his name on her lips sends a jolt of lust through him. So many foolish fantasies he's had about just that simple thing, so many dreams where he's woken up hard and alone and wondering. "Jaime, I need you to fuck me. I need it, I've been waiting for so long." 

It's too much. He bites his lip on a groan as he bends down to skim his hands up the columns of her legs, carrying her dress with them. He arranges the pool of fabric off to the side, and she widens her stance, letting him see how pink and flushed and wet she is. He can't help sliding a finger through all that slickness, and she wriggles with impatience as he brings it to his mouth. She tastes like everything he'd told himself he'd never have again.

"Jaime," she says again, and it's more urgent this time, with a slight edge of exasperation that just makes him harder; he can't see her eyes from this angle, but he can imagine the way they're flashing right now. He takes his cock out of his open slacks and gives it a couple of strokes, just enough to take the edge off. Just as he's about to push into her, practicality catches up to him and his knees nearly buckle with the realization.

"I--" he starts, but he can't quite bring himself to say the words. He can't fucking believe that he-- 

"Inside the waistband of my dress, at the back," she grits out, still shifting, still trying to find some friction of her own. "Pocket."

He raises an eyebrow, but obediently fishes around in the fabric, and… sure enough, there's a foil packet in there, sewn into a small fold. _Oh, thank every one of the Seven_. Then, "Do you always bring condoms with you on business trips?"

"You really think I was going to come here naked under this dress and _not_ bring a condom?" she snaps. His laugh turns into a shudder halfway through as he rolls the latex down over his hard length. Gods, he's missed her, and he's going to come out of his skin if he can't get inside her soon. 

"I like a woman who's prepared," he purrs. He makes himself wait just a little bit longer, dragging his cock teasingly along the lips of her cunt. She makes a strangled, frustrated noise. 

"Oh, the condom is to keep the mess to a minimum," she tells him, though she can't quite keep her voice even. "I haven't been with anyone else, and if you haven't, either, later you can fuck me without anything at--" and that's it, his vision whites out and he drives into her as far as he can get. 

While he closes his eyes and tries to breathe through the fuse that's sizzling through his body, it occurs to him that the hottest thing about what she just said is _later_.

Later. 

He could get used to the idea of that.

Later is a luxury they won't have if they get caught, though, and a glance at the clock reveals that they've got less than fifteen minutes left. He puts his hands to her hips and thrusts in again, all the way this time, and she turns her head to the side so she can muffle her moans in her own shoulder as he pulls out and then sinks back in, setting a punishing rhythm to bring them both to the edge as quickly as possible. No matter how good his memory is, no matter how starkly he'd thought she was imprinted on his soul, it turns out that it was still only a pale shadow of the reality of her, hot and tight around him. Her loose curls are spread out on the table, her cheeks flushed, her back curved in front of him like an invitation to his tongue. He lowers himself over her, needing more contact. Even through his clothes, he can feel the heat rising off of her. He reaches out to slot the fingers of one hand through hers, gripping tight, using the leverage to drive deeper still. Deeper, harder, closer. He looks at the clock again: nine minutes left, which is about eight minutes longer than he's going to last. 

"Brienne," he says, savoring the taste of it. The truth in it. She squeezes her eyes shut and makes a noise that's close to a sob. "Brienne. Gods. Brienne." _Later_ , he holds somewhere behind his sternum, like the good luck charm he's never believed in. _Later, later, later._ She holds his hand so tightly it hurts. He welcomes it, welcomes the reminder that she's here, that she's with him, that he's inside her and she's surrounding him and he's not going to let her slip away this time. She shifts her hips, calf muscles clenching as she rises up on her tiptoes in her heels, and the new angle pulls a high-pitched gasp out of her.

"Yes, like that, just like that, please," she chants, and he does what she asks, over and over again until she's contracting hard around him. That's all he can take. Seven minutes left, and he grips her hand and pulses inside her and lets himself collapse over the freckled map of her back.

It's been a night for setting records, because the new winner for hardest thing he's ever had to do is straightening up and pulling out of her before they've even had a chance to catch their breath. But the clock is inexorable. She reaches back with the hand that he'd tied to the table--sure enough, the knot is undone now, and something in his gut goes warm, that she wants him to know that she chose to stay--and grips his hip briefly before levering herself up, too. She keeps her back to him, but she turns just right as she's sliding her arm through the shoulder straps and he sees it: a long, vivid, fresh scar, winding across the right side of her abdomen.

He catches her arm, pulls it to the side so he can peer closer. "Gods be good, Brienne. What the hell happened?"

"We can talk about it later," she says, and there's that word again. As seductive as it is, though, he still doesn't want to wait. Not for this.

"Tell me." He gentles his hold on her and kisses the back of her wrist. "Please."

She looks at the clock, looks back at him. Her shoulders heave up and drop down. "Someone was after you, in Lys," she says quickly. "Their people contacted me first, that last morning. They wanted me to flip on you. I… I made sure they didn't get any further than that. All right?" 

He barks out a short, humorless laugh. "No, it's not all right. Nothing about that is all right. Where are they now? What did they do to you?"

"I took care of it," she says firmly. "And then I healed. And then…" She lifts a shoulder, and the corner of her mouth turns up, though there's a twist to it that could be pain. "I couldn't find you. Not for a long time. All those times we kept running into each other, and then when I _wanted_ to, you were nowhere to be found. You're very good at your job, you know that?"

After the first several months, he'd been staying closer to ground than usual, now that he thinks about it. Licking his wounds. Until he'd heard about Fernough, and he hadn't been able to stand on the sidelines for that, even if it meant raising his profile. He raises her hand to his lips again. "But you found me."

That gets a smile, a real one, like a signal flare. "I found you."

That scar is going to haunt him, at least until he can prove to himself that she's whole and well despite it. But now isn't the time, so he only smiles back at her. "So it looks like you're pretty good at your job, too." 

She laughs, the last of the tension sliding out of her. "Jaime, we have to go."

"All right." He helps her slide the straps up over her shoulders, and seals each one with a kiss. "But this isn't the end of this conversation."

"Later," she says, like a vow, and he plans to hold them both to it.

The gods, of course, have other plans. Her contact is delayed, the replacement that he sends blows their cover, and before Jaime knows it, they're running down a maze of underground corridors that he only vaguely remembers from the maps he'd studied before coming here. She's shed her shoes, and if her feet start bleeding, they might as well be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. When they come around a corner to find an exit to the river and a jet-ski waiting--a single, solitary jet-ski, some discarded toy--he pulls the container with the vial in it out of his pocket.

"No." She shakes her head vehemently. 

"I have shoes," he points out, "and you're a better swimmer, if it comes to that." It had better not come to that. He can hear Fernough's men thundering down the hallway behind them. The countdown is already ticking away in his head.

"I can wear your shoes," she says, stubborn to the last, and he can't help laughing. He kisses her on the forehead and tucks the container into her hand.

"Brienne. You know you have to go. And besides, you owe me." He traces a finger along her right side. It's his turn to bleed, this time, if anyone has to.

She growls at him, but takes the container. He lets out the breath he's been holding. "We'll talk about this later," she tells him, still glaring.

"Later," he agrees. She leans in to kiss him, hard, and for once, she doesn't even try to hide the fact that she's dropping something in his pocket. 

"Tarth," she whispers in his ear, so quietly he can barely make it out. "Come find me on Tarth." Then she kisses him once more, straddles the jet-ski, and she's gone.

It's a near thing, but Jaime has a few tricks up his sleeve, and the morning finds him collapsed on his back in a field, exhausted but in one piece. As the sun starts to warm the horizon, he digs in his pocket to see what Brienne had left for him. It's a small rock, worn smooth by water, like the souvenirs he used to sometimes pick up from the shoreline near Casterly Rock. It's also a stunning color, a distinctive blue he's never seen anywhere else before.

He rolls the stone in his hand. He wonders what Tarth is like this time of year. 

_Later_ , he thinks, smiling. He climbs to his feet. 

**TARTH: later**

Tarth at this time of year, as it turns out, is stunning. The cliffs rise into the sky like the thrones of ancient gods, the water crashes against the rocks with exhilarating roars. The sky is wild and wide and almost as blue as the scattered rocks on the beach that Jaime finds himself standing on.

"Took you long enough," Brienne says, shading her eyes from the sun as she makes her way toward him. Her hair is blowing around her face in the salty air. She's wearing faded jeans and sandals and a button-down white shirt with rolled-up sleeves and she looks more at ease here, more grounded, than he's ever seen her.

And she's letting him see it.

"You said _later_ ," he points out when she gets near. He could almost laugh at how his heart is galloping in his chest. He digs in his pocket, reaches out to drop the rock into her open palm.

"You figured out my clue," she says, grinning, and she's still too far away. He hooks a finger through one of her belt loops and tugs until she sways into him.

"You also said 'Tarth,'" he feels honor-bound to admit, just in case she doesn't remember. "Not much credit to my tradecraft there."

"Yes, well." She loops her arms around his neck. "This time, I wasn't taking any chances."

"So are you saying that 'later' is now?" he asks. He gives her a slanted smile and tucks her flying hair behind her ear. He wants to hear her say it.

She kisses him then, and when she answers, it's with her lips against his mouth. "It sure as hell better be."

**Author's Note:**

> For years, I made fun of JJ Abrams for being constitutionally incapable of telling a linear story. Then I wrote my own ridiculous spy shenanigans, and FAILED TO TELL A LINEAR STORY. I played myself!


End file.
